Creatio has announced the latest release (8.1) of its no-code platform. The Creatio Quantum release delivers a fully composable architecture comparable to Lego. It will enable organisations to build any solution quickly and contain ready-made components that can slot quickly into the solution.
The release signals the complete shift to a composable architecture for all Creatio Products. This also means that the components of the Creatio solutions are now available for customers to build or extend their solutions. Creatio has also made new components and blocks available. Including support for generative AI and a new governance app for Creatio users.
Enterprise Times recently spoke with Andie Dovgan, Chief Growth Officer at Creatio. On the Quantum release, he said, “This introduces, in our opinion, a new era in business automation. Creatio, to my knowledge, is the only vendor in this space that offers this composable experience for CRM, workflow automation, and vertical solutions, which means that everything in our platform has been decomposed to a level of smaller components and blocks. Every widget, every feature, every set of capabilities, is now like a composable block. Non-technical people and business technologists can use these to assemble a workflow or an application from those available blocks.
“We’re talking about this new era of business automation. Before that, we had the cloud; before that, we had monolithic architecture. We believe we’re in this no-code composable era that brings a very different experience and speed to change for those companies that require it.”
What does Creatio Quantum contain?
As with the Atlas release the company launched last year, Quantum contains several highlighted features, some of which build on the previous version. Atlas brought customers an Application Hub. App management that included: App lifecycle management, a No-code designer, a UI designer. There are also Improvements to calendar integration, administration, security, performance and new development tools. There were also minor improvements in its Sales, Marketing and Mobile applications. Quantum consists of five key improvements.
Quantum architecture
Creatio is now a fully composable no-code platform. Every piece of the Creatio platform, including its solutions, is built using components and blocks. These could be widgets or even a set of fields. For example, Gauges, Donut graphs, Metric, calendars or larger components such as field sales, projects and requests.
Organisations can combine these blocks and components into case management or sales forecasting applications. Each application can then be connected to create a full business process or function. Creatio believes that organisations can build solutions in minutes using the platform. More importantly, the solution’s flexibility will enable organisations to adjust components to meet the current demand for changes.
New components added to an extensive library
Creatio has added more than 100 new components to its existing library. The components will enable organisations to build enterprise-wide or specific functional solutions within their organisations. New components include components and blocks such as Next steps, Timeline, Approvals, Communication panel, Mini pages, Editable lists, Timers, Messaging components, Prompts with decision paths, and Mobile app components.
Breaking down Creatio CRM
One impressive aspect of Quantum is that Creatio has also broken down its existing applications into blocks within the composable framework. This not only means that organisations can extend the existing sales and marketing solutions better. It will also make it easier for Creatio to enhance the solutions in the future.
With Sales and Marketing broken down, organisations can take components of the CRM to apply to other use cases that may not need the full functionality. They could leverage the Customer 360 addon app to manage customer data. Or the Digital Ads addon app to consolidate and orchestrate all their digital campaigns in one place.
Creatio has been building new composable applications for customers for several months. Recent additions include:
- Case Management, available from 8.08, provides intelligent, full-cycle service management capabilities that improve all processes related to service delivery
- Lead & Opportunity Management, available with the Quantum release. Organisations can easily create leads from visually stunning landing pages. Import from files and streamline lead and opportunity workflows with automation
- Productivity, available with Quantum release, allows organisations to effortlessly create, schedule, and manage meetings, personal tasks, and work calls, all in one place
Other solutions that Creatio announced but have not yet appeared on the marketplace include Knowledge Management, Order & Contact Management, Engagement tools, Email Marketing, and Event Marketing. Creatio is committed to adding more applications in the future.
Generative AI
With the Quantum release, Creatio is making available new generative AI components. Powered by OpenAI, organisations can now speed up the development process with a natural language interface that enables organisations to build composable applications faster. A natural language interface will enable users to leverage pre-generated templates, components or even full applications, to build solutions based on their prompts. It will enable the rapid prototyping of solutions.
The components will also enable organisations to build solutions that can leverage generative AI to provide text responses or analyse historical data to provide insights and offer recommendations for decisions.
Enterprise Times asked Creatio about what data its generative AI solutions would access. A spokesperson replied, “The customers can use either public or a private instance of Open AI. Open AI is using publicly available data based on a provided narrative to generate user views, data model, objects and analytics. Customers can switch off the information sharing option to erase of data shared with Open AI.”
Customers need to carefully consider what they choose, as sharing data with Open AI runs a risk of data breaches if the wrong data is shared. This is where the new governance module should help.
Better governance
One of the concerns often raised about no-code applications is the amount of governance the platforms have. In April 2023, Creatio launched a new Governance Automation Application that streamlines Creatio audit processes and low-code/no-code apps. The initial release included a framework for governance automations and several out-of-the-box components to improve governance procedures.
New governance app
Recognizing the importance of governance in the realm of no-code automation, in the latest version, Creatio offers a new governance app with robust capabilities to automate the end-to-end no-code governance cycle.
It now covers several use cases, including the ability to:
- Run data governance checks to ensure compliance with best practices for administering Creatio data, recognising and controlling access to data that falls under GDPR and HIPAA regulations
- Run user access governance checks to limit access to your environment for system administrators, access to data export and password policies
- Run operational governance checks to ensure the environment operates correctly. Including application integrity, licensing, and development features in production environments
- Run security governance checks to identify potential security risks of your environment. Both for different Creatio environments and components such as Redis Server or DB Server
As with other components, the governance framework is composable, enabling users to build and extend their own governance controls using the Creatio no-code platform. The governance solution also now included the ability to monitor, identify and escalate issues and to run scheduled or ad hoc audits.
Enterprise Times: What does this mean
Creatio is already a growing force in the no-code world. It was positioned as a challenger in the 2023 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Sales Force Automation Platforms. While still a niche player in the enterprise Low Code Applications Platforms Quantum has been steadily approaching the leader quadrant over the last couple of years.
The release of Quantum could signal a shift in the importance of Creatio in what is now a fiercely competitive market. What it needs to do next is to ensure that customers take advantage of the new composable platform and build case studies that other firms can admire.
For more details about the Quantum release, Creatio is hosting an event at 10.00 EST (15.00 BST) today, 20th September to give an overview of the release.
